ZIM Day 27

At first I didn’t know what to think of the strange man standing in front of me. He seemed familiar, but I knew I’d never met him before. His hair was long, dark, and unkempt. His beard was almost as long and just as dark. The man was wearing a full length white lab coat and multicolored plaid pants. He used a cane to keep the weight off his right leg as he limped forward.

“It’s about time you guys showed up. I’ve been waiting down here for weeks now.”

I asked him, “Who are you? How did you know we’d show up? What is this place?”

He looked surprised, “What do you mean who am I? You guys were sent down here to pick me up right?”

BW cut in, “Yeah, were sent down here, but we weren’t even told what we were looking for. Just that we had to retrieve something. I have no idea who you are.”“You mean you guys don’t know anything. I figured the entire country would be looking for me by now. I’ve been just sitting around waiting since it happened. There’s no way in hell I was going to go up there alone. I wouldn’t last a second. The guys in charge didn’t even tell you who I was?”

BW looked dumbfounded, “To tell ya the truth, I’m not even sure who is in charge any more. I’ve been in contact via internet and haven’t been briefed on much. I just knew we had to come down here and pick something up. I don’t even know what my next mission is.”

I couldn’t take it anymore, “Ok then, who the hell are you? What is so special about you that every one would be looking for you? And why did they send us down here. We’re not even part of the military.”

“My name is Osiris. I’m the one who can stop this madness.”

I just stared blankly at the strange man. Did he really just say he could stop it? Obviously, I doubted him instantly.

“What do you mean, ‘stop it’?”

Every one shifted uneasily. The tension filled the room. He didn’t say anything, just looked down at the floor and turned away from us. He nervously twisted the cane in his hands. Without looking back, he spoke softly, but clearly.

“My former partner was the one who started it all. He was a good man, but lost his mind in the end. They hired us to work on some new top secret project. We weren’t allowed to talk to any one. They didn’t tell us what it even was. I’m still not sure if it was supposed to be a weapon or what the original plan was. Things were great for a while. We had all of the funding, supplies, and technology a scientist could ever want. They would only tell us small parts of what we were doing.

To this day I don’t really know what it is. It was supposed to be some sort of a mix between a biological, chemical, electrical, and radioactive weapon. Of course, it was meant to save the world. We were making progress. It wasn’t supposed to be anything like what happened out there. Then my partner began to lose control. He started coming up with crazy ideas about what we were doing. He kept talking about how he figured out how to make it work, but none of it ever made sense.

Then one morning I woke up and he was gone. The guys in charge said that he was taken to another location to keep his findings more classified. They said that I was to keep working, but now they said they needed something different, something to counteract what we had already accomplished. I knew that we didn’t have anything that could do any damage so I was confused. I thought for awhile that they had just killed him to keep him quiet and that I was next. Then I’d think that he did find something and it was dangerous or something.

But then I started receiving messages from him. Encrypted emails disguised as spam and advertisements. He sounded like he’d lost his mind. He kept saying that he’d gotten away and that I had to as well, but he never actually told me where to go. Then he’d go on about how we had to look past science to finish the project, to look for something darker. He sent me all kinds of strange diagrams of genetic maps and electronic technologies. All in code of course. I didn’t know what to make of any of it at first.

Then the world went to hell and I was stuck down here by myself. I’ve been working nonstop to figure out how to stop it and I think I know what we have to do.”

“We?”

He just shoved a laptop into its case and pointed to the other end of the room.